Crossed Read Free

at once is supposedly what made me an Emperor-level vampire. Vampires are supposed to come in four different flavors: Drones, Soldiers, Masters, and Vlads. If they were beverages, Drones would be milk (no power to speak of and not worth crying over), Soldiers would be tea (a little bit of kick, but nothing that will keep you awake nights), Masters might be coffee (avoid before bedtime), and Vlads would be a concoction from Starbucks with an extra shot of espresso. But Emperors wouldn’t even be a beverage—we’d be something like whole chocolate-covered dark espresso beans. Every now and then, the universe cuts you a break. Speaking of which . . .
    Guests had been arriving at the wedding in transportation modes of varying impressiveness. Usually this meant some type of limousine with windows that had been thoroughly blacked out. I’d hoped that by holding the wedding during the day we’d get tons of polite regrets. Instead the vampiric elite had all taken it as a challenge to find a way to be awake and attend. I think most of them did it just to chap my ass.
    Out in the vestibule, I heard Talbot greeting Lord Phillip, but beyond that, rapidly approaching, I heard motorcycle engines—not just one, but maybe a dozen. Needless to say, no one on the guest list would be showing up on a motorcycle. Then I smelled wet fur. Werewolves. The first thought that went through my head was:
I’m the luckiest motherfucker on the planet!
    “Attention, undead filth!” a voice rang out with the crackle and pop of an outdated bullhorn. “Marriage is for the living, not the dead! Till death do us part, not in death do we start! Now burn!”
    “Get cleaned up,” I ordered Rachel. Given her druthers, she’d have disobeyed, but that’s the great thing about thralls. They can argue with you until you make it an order, but then they have to obey.
    My vampiric speed kicked in and I ran out of the dressing room still zipping up my fly. My adopted daughter Greta, a six-foot blonde, met me at the chapel door. She was dressed as a flower girl in white, a basket of rose petals in her hand. I’d rescued Greta from a truly bad situation and adopted her as my own. She’d been human, only nine or ten years old, and though I’d turned her on her twenty-first birthday, sometimes when I look at her I still see that little girl, feel that need to protect her. Whatever was coming, it was
not
going to hurt my daughter. “I’ve never seen werewolves like this before, Dad,” she said.
    A Molotov cocktail burst through a stained-glass window, only to be deftly caught and flung out again by Ebon Winter, one of my guests. Imagine the most handsome man possible in all creation and you’ll be picturing Ebon Winter. He has that effect on people. Winter is a gambler and an artist. He sings, he owns a really upscale club called the Artiste Unknown, he designs his own clothes, and he’s one heck of an interior decorator. He’s high society, and his pathological need to bet on damn near everything, up to and including social interactionsand how long it’ll take me to lose my temper, makes him a bit dangerous to hang out with, but otherwise not bad. I’d invited him even though he had told me he was betting against me in Paris . . . whatever the hell that meant.
    “Phil,” Winter called over his shoulder, “a little cloud cover for our combustible groom?”
    Lord Phillip effectively runs Void City, the slice of urban America I call home, along with who knows how much of the rest of the country. He’s short, fat, and balding, but he’s also the only vampire spell caster the Mage Guild hasn’t destroyed. He’s also in charge of the Veil of Scrythax, the magic what’s-it that helps conceal the existence of the supernatural from Void City’s more mundane inhabitants. Phil is rarely seen outside of the Highland Towers, preferring not to risk his unlife away from the ironclad protection of his mystic wards. My wedding was an exception.
    “If you